What would you do?

 Well, what would you do?

She’s a rebel

She does what she wants to

She goes where she wants to

She says what she want to

Where ever she wants to

She’s a rebel

Ira

He had no heart

He got over you

Don’t waste your tears now he has gone

You know you’re not the only one. IRA.

Who needs money?

Who needs money when your face is funny and you head out over the hills

Who needs cash if your prospects are dashed and you ain’t got a future at all

Who needs dough when there’s nowhere to go and there’s nothing to see or do

Who needs money, who needs money, who needs money at all?

The Twilight Zone

 I’m living out here in the Twilight Zone

The local thugs, they deal their drugs

Zeroes

Zeroes, you got me talking ‘bout zeroes

Zeroes, they’re like that every day

I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what’s going on, I just don’t know

What’s going on?

Believe me.

Would I lie to you? Would I lie to you, honey? Now would I tell you something that wasn’t true?  Look at me sugar, would I lie to you?

I am the prince

I am the prince, I’m a fcuking idiot

One day you will sing to me

One day when I’m king

One day you will sing to me, glory be

The Pension/ISA Spectrum

Pensions or ISAs?  Only one way to decide...  

FIGHT!!!

Truth be told it is not either or, but using the two in conjunction with each other.  The key thing to remember is what will you want the money for.  Pensions are designed for income post-55. ISAs are better for large one off purchases like houses and any expenditure pre-55 like school fees. 

As far as this piece is concerned, I am only considering Stocks & Shares ISAs.  There are also ISAs like the Lifetime ISA which can be used to save for a deposit on a property with lots of strings attached and a lower deposit limit (£4k/annum) but can pay a 25% bonus, and Cash ISAs which just pay low rates of interest.  Also there are Innovative Finance ISAs which have a very low take up.  They are all best avoided unless your particular circumstances merit considering them.

As far as this piece is concerned, I am only considering Defined Contribution pensions. There are also Defined Benefit pensions.  These pensions guarantee an income but there is no residual value when the pension ends which is normally on the death of pensioner or possibly on subsequent death of their spouse. It is possible to have both DC and DB pensions. DB pensions have some advantages over DC pensions and vice versa.  However in the main there are fewer DB schemes these days and to simplify the discussion they are not considered here.

For many there are significant tax breaks when you pay into a pension such as not paying higher rates of tax, not being subject to tapering of personal allowances, getting child benefit, not paying national insurance and having employers national insurance added to your pot. Also 25% of the fund can be taken tax free.  And for low earners (under £12.5k) and non-earners you can get 25% of your contribution added by the tax man. However you may have to pay income tax when the money is taken out of the pension.  And you can’t access it until you are 55 (or 57 from 2028).

ISAs are simpler.  There is no tax relief on the money put in, but there is no income tax paid on withdrawals.

Both ISAs and pensions avoid capital gains tax.

Stocks and Shares ISA

• Strength
• £20,000/annum deposit limit
• No Income tax on withdrawals
• Tax Free Growth
• No withdrawal limits
• Funds can be withdrawn at any age
• Funds can be deposited at any age
• No Limits on growth
• Weakness
• No Tax relief on way in
• Subject to IHT
• Opportunity
• Tax free lump sum from pensions can be placed in ISAs to continue to grow tax free 
• Threat
• Changes in Legislation
• Limits can be reduced
• Stock Market Conditions

Defined Contribution Pension

• Strength
• £40,000/annum deposit limit 
• Income tax relief
• Child Benefit
• Tapering personal allowance
• Employee's National Insurance
• Employer's National Insurance (Salary Sacrifice)
• Tax Free Growth
• 25% tax free lump sum
• Not subject to IHT
• Crytallised funds are tax free if death occurs before 75
• Can be used to purchase an annuity with a guaranteed income
• Weakness
• Deposit limit dependent on earnings 
• Lifetime Allowance Charge on crystalised funds over £1,073,100
• Lifetime Allowance Charge on growth of crystallised funds
• Income Tax to be paid on withdrawals
• Can't access funds until age 55 (or 57 from 2028)
• Accessing crytallised funds can reduce deposit limit to £4,000/annum
• Can't add further funds after age 75
• Opportunity 
• Timing of crystallising pots can allow for larger withdrawals
• Threat
• Changes in Legislation
• limits can be reduced
• ages can be changed
• Stock Market Conditions

A large pension pot before you are 55 (or 57 from 2028) is not necessarily a good thing as you can end up paying more in tax than the relief obtained.   A large ISA is also not necessarily a good thing as they are subject to inheritance tax.

The following is all based on current thresholds.

The targets to aim for are 

• up to £840k pot at 55+, 
• no more than £800k pension pot at 75 and 
• nothing in your ISA when you die.

Not reaching these targets is not a problem. Most people won’t and they don’t really need to. Exceeding them can result in paying unnecessary LTA charges and IHT.

Target #1 up to £840k at 55+ - pretty hard to reach - however it is most important to not this is an up to figure and you can look at achieving this anytime after 55, especially if you continue to work.

With £840k, you can take £210k tax free and leave the other £630k to grow.  Also you can add £2880 every year with the tax man adding an extra £720 even if you earn nothing.

Target #2 no more than £800k at 75 - not as hard as #1 -  As it is an extra 20 years, growth may well take it there with a half decent pot (say £150k) at 55. For larger pots at the outset it would be necessary to make some withdrawals.  The lurking spectre is LTA which is currently £1,073,100. Three quarters of that is £804,825.  Staying below £800k should mean you to avoid the punitive LTA.  However, exceeding LTA is not all bad.  You may pay 25% tax now, but your pot will not be subject to IHT.

Target #3 nothing in ISA when you die - pretty hard as you have no idea when you die!  Assuming you squirrel away the tax free cash into the ISA, you could easily have £1 million at 75.  Hanging onto it isn’t worthwhile especially if you have other assets like a house, so spend it!

What you should be doing depending on your age and circumstances.  This is a spectrum from birth to death of what you probably should be doing at different life stages. The boundaries are not hard and fast in the most part, except for 55 (which will rise to 57), 67 and 75.  These are key milestones.

Red;   0 - 18.  You earn nothing but maybe kindly affluent parents, grand parents, uncles or aunties put up to £3,600/annum into a pension for you.  You could end up with a pension pot of over £200k at 18. Only problem is it will be nearly 40 years before you can get hold of it.    If only they had put £9,000/annum into a junior isa that would be worth over £500K.

1. ISA (£9k/annum - fully funded £500k - accessible at 18) 2. Pension (£3.6k/annum - fully funded £200k - accessible at 57)

Orange; 18-35.  Typical circumstances .You get a job.  You earn less than £50k.  You are 20-40 years away from accessing your pension pot.  You are saving to buy a house.  You don’t have kids. Put spare cash into an ISA.  Put employer contributions into a pension.  Match contributions if possible to maximise what you put into a pension.

1. ISA (add £20k/annum) 2. Pension (add up to £40k/annum)

Yellow; 35-45.  You have a job.  You have a house.  You have kids.  You earn over £50k. Between 10 and 20 years before you access pension pot. Put employers contributions into a pension.  Put earnings over £50k into a pension. Put spare cash into ISA.

1. Pension (add up to £40k/annum) 2. ISA (add £20k/annum)

Green:  45-55. You have a job.  You have a house.  You have kids.  You earn over £50k. Less then 10 years until you access pension pot. Put employers contributions into a pension.  Put earnings over £50k into a pension. Put spare cash into ISA.  Beware of LTA and don’t over fund pension.  It should be less than 100% LTA at 55.

1. Pension (add up to £40k/annum) 2. ISA (add £20k/annum)

Blue: 55-67. You haven’t got to state pension age but you can access your pension pot. Crystallise pension at 55 and take tax free cash.  Depending on size of pot it may make sense to crystalise annually.  Crystallising £80k/annum would make sense.  Do not touch the rest.  Put tax free cash into ISA.  Put at least £3,600 into pension every year more if you continue to work. Beware of LTA and don’t over fund pension. If close to LTA, crystallise. Take growth to keep it below LTA.  And crystallise as frequently as necessary to not exceed LTA  Stress test pension annually.

1. Pension (add up to £40k/annum, take out £12.5k or £50k if retired) 2. ISA (add £20k/annum including tax free cash)

Indigo: 67-75. State pension age. assume pension of £10k. Put at least £3,600 into pension every year. Beware of LTA and don’t over fund pension.  Take growth to keep it below LTA.  And crystallise as frequently as necessary to not exceed LTA. Stress test pension annually.

1. Pension (add up to £40k/annum, take out £2.5k or £40k if retired) 2. ISA (add £20k/annum including tax free cash)

Violet: 75+.   Only take tax free income from your pension.  Spend the money in the ISA.  On death, pension pot is not subject to IHT.

1. ISA (Spend it all) 2.Pension (take £2.5k/annum)

Python - Get HTML Pages

1. Download Python

https://www.python.org/downloads/

2. Install Python

Create a Python folder and run executable (name likley to diifer)

‪C:\Users\arrge\Python>C:\Users\arrge\Downloads\python-3.9.1-amd64.exe

3. Get PIP

https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

Save it somewhere

C:\Users\arrge\Python>py get-pip.py

C:\Users\arrge\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\setuptools\distutils_patch.py:25: UserWarning: Distutils was imported before Setuptools. This usage is discouraged and may exhibit undesirable behaviors or errors. Please use Setuptools' objects directly or at least import Setuptools first.
  warnings.warn(
Collecting pip
  Downloading pip-21.0.1-py3-none-any.whl (1.5 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 1.5 MB 2.2 MB/s
Collecting wheel
  Downloading wheel-0.36.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (35 kB)
Installing collected packages: wheel, pip
  WARNING: The script wheel.exe is installed in 'C:\Users\arrge\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
  Attempting uninstall: pip
    Found existing installation: pip 20.2.3
    Uninstalling pip-20.2.3:
      Successfully uninstalled pip-20.2.3
  WARNING: The scripts pip.exe, pip3.9.exe and pip3.exe are installed in 'C:\Users\arrge\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts' which is not on PATH.
  Consider adding this directory to PATH or, if you prefer to suppress this warning, use --no-warn-script-location.
Successfully installed pip-21.0.1 wheel-0.36.2

4. Install Beautiful Soup and Requests

pip install beautifulsoup4

pip install requests

5. Write script test.py

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup, SoupStrainer

import requests

for i in range (2,136):

    xstr = str(i)

    if i < 10:

        xstr = "00" + str(i)

    elif i < 100:

        xstr = "0" + str(i)     

    url = "http://www.thearsenalhistory.com/stat/aftlu_files/sheet" + xstr + ".htm"  

    print (url)

    page = requests.get(url)    

    data = page.text

    soup = BeautifulSoup(data, features="html.parser")

    filename = str(1884+i) + "_" + str(1885+i) + ".htm"

    with open(filename, 'w', encoding="utf-8") as f:

        tables = soup.find_all('table')

        for tb in tables:

            print(tb.prettify().replace("-","~"), file=f)

6. run script test.py

C:\Users\arrge\Python>py test.py

http://www.thearsenalhistory.com/stat/aftlu_files/sheet002.htm

http://www.thearsenalhistory.com/stat/aftlu_files/sheet003.htm

http://www.thearsenalhistory.com/stat/aftlu_files/sheet004.htm

Retire then Emigrate

Decisions, decisions.